Lack of volunteers threatens to cancel Croaker Festival

Published: Monday, February 24, 2014 at 06:08 PM.

ORIENTAL — A lack of volunteers threatens cancellation of the Croaker Festival, one of the area’s top July 4th celebrations.

Candy Bohmert, the longtime festival coordinator, said event planning is months behind and at present volunteers are nearly non-existent.

“It’s bad,” she said of the prospects that the annual Independence Day weekend event scheduled for July 4 and 5. The Croaker Festival has been a staple in Oriental since it was started by the Oriental Woman’s Club in 1980. It annually draws thousands of visitors for two days of music, a parade, fireworks, a children’s park, cooking and coloring contests and more than 70 vendors.

“I have volunteers to do the Kids’ Park, period,” she said. “And, the Croaker Festival costs about $35,000 a year to put on.”

Time, she said, is running out. Normally, she said the volunteers assemble and begin work on the festival in November.

This year, the call for volunteers have generally gone unheeded. A March 8 meeting at Brantley’s restaurant is scheduled, and Bohmert said the turnout will determine the festival’s fate this year. It begins at 9 a.m.

She estimated ad sales and working with the vendors each takes at least 200 hours.

ORIENTAL — A lack of volunteers threatens cancellation of the Croaker Festival, one of the area’s top July 4th celebrations.

Candy Bohmert, the longtime festival coordinator, said event planning is months behind and at present volunteers are nearly non-existent.

“It’s bad,” she said of the prospects that the annual Independence Day weekend event scheduled for July 4 and 5. The Croaker Festival has been a staple in Oriental since it was started by the Oriental Woman’s Club in 1980. It annually draws thousands of visitors for two days of music, a parade, fireworks, a children’s park, cooking and coloring contests and more than 70 vendors.

“I have volunteers to do the Kids’ Park, period,” she said. “And, the Croaker Festival costs about $35,000 a year to put on.”

Time, she said, is running out. Normally, she said the volunteers assemble and begin work on the festival in November.

This year, the call for volunteers have generally gone unheeded. A March 8 meeting at Brantley’s restaurant is scheduled, and Bohmert said the turnout will determine the festival’s fate this year. It begins at 9 a.m.

She estimated ad sales and working with the vendors each takes at least 200 hours.

“Those jobs are our income streams,” she said, with money coming from program ad sales and vendor booth fees.

On a good year, there will be upwards of $10,000 to carry into the next year.

“Last year was not a good year,” she said. “All the bills are paid and I’ve got about $4,000.”

Half of that amount, she said, would go toward awarding scholarships that are given during the Miss Croaker Pageant.

“Normally, by this time of the year I have already ordered the fireworks,” she said, adding that half the cost has to be paid up front.

Bohmert said the volunteers efforts had been dwindling for several years. She needs a minimum of 16 volunteers.

“Of course, there were two Croaker Festivals where I was dealing with cancer treatments,” she said.

This year, she said the volunteers simply dried up.

“Over the winter, some of my volunteers said ‘we just can’t do this anymore. We have our own lives and our own things to do.’” She said. “I had several say I’m sorry, we’re just not doing it this year.”

She attributes weariness on the annual volunteers and an aging local population as causes for the decline.

“And, every time we have a hurricane we lose a lot of people. They leave,” she said. “It (population) gets older and older and the younger people are simply trying to make a living and don’t have the time.”

Bohmert, who has a full-time job with Soil and Water Conservation, said she really needs someone new to take of the reigns of leadership.

“I don’t want to run it,” she said. “I have other things I am doing. My life has taken a different turn, too. I will help someone pull it together, but to be perfectly honest, having a meeting on March 8 is really late in the season.”

She said that meeting will make or break the festival for this year.

“This is an all-volunteer effort and we are completely self-supporting,” she said. “If you don’t have people contributing time and money, then you just can’t have it.”